It’s a weekday evening. Around 12 people are waiting at Benne, an eatery in Greater Kailash II’s M Block. The menu is exhaustive and thus it does not exhaust the customers. “I like that I don’t have to think about what to order before coming here. I know it’s Benne Dosa,” says Kavya, a student at Delhi University.Benne means butter. The eatery gives customers three variations of butter dosa, along with some other accompaniments like Idli and filter coffee.Aditya Vaidya, Head of Delhi Operations of Benne, says, “I feel that the restaurants that have a relatively smaller menu tend to serve better food… If you have 50 items on the menu, the customer’s attention gets divided.”However, it’s not just Benne focusing on a limited menu. Many eateries across Delhi are building their identity around a signature food item, while others are cutting their menus. Priyamvada Gupta of DumboPriyamvada Gupta co–founded Dumbo, a specialty sandwich eatery chain, last year with her husband Prateek Gupta. “I like a small menu because I’m otherwise going to spend 20 minutes on what’s the best thing that I want to order,” she says. Polka dot chairs, books and bright colours define the vibe at the cafe, according to her.Along with her husband, Prateek, she also runs two fine-dining restaurants but Dumbo — that has three outlets across Delhi, serving Italian Florentine ciabatta sandwiches with five vegetarian and non-vegetarian options – was no less than a passion project.“We are inspired by Florence, Italy, where they have these sandwich shops (delis) that have an exactly similar menu and are just grab-and-go,” she explains.Story continues below this adSimilarly, Akhil co-founded Benne in 2024, inspired by ‘The Darshinis’ in Karnataka — small fast-food eateries with only stand-and-eat options.Benne essentially is a stand-and-eat space, but it has a small table for a group of six. “The whole point was to elevate and give a modern touch to a ‘Darshini’. But we’re still essentially a Darshini,” said Iyer.Vaidya, who ran a restaurant in Maharashtra’s Sangli before he joined Benne, highlights the benefits of having a limited menu: “For serving items quickly, a vast menu can’t be an option. We have chosen efficiency over variety.”Gupta agrees, “It’s easier to do 10 things well than 30.”Story continues below this adOperationally, however, both the now-popular eateries believe the size of the menu doesn’t matter because it the service changes everything. “We have a base kitchen which staffs over 20-25 people who handle making batter batches that then come to our outlet multiple times through the day. We have 15 people in a shift in the main restaurant who essentially just make the final product and serve.” Aditya explains.Other Delhi eateries like The Khow Suey Shop and T’s Tiramisu also have just one item to offer. The Khow Suey Shop, as its name suggests, serves a Burmese-style Khow suey and offers three varieties.In the narrow lanes of Safdarjung, where almost every restaurant serves a variety of north-eastern, Nepalese, Burmese, and Korean cuisine, sits Laphings Corner, which, much like any of the momo stall, has just chicken momos, vegetarian laphings, and non-vegetarian laphings.Started in April this year, Kaala, which works on ‘pay what you want mode’, is a hole-in-the-wall coffee place in Shahpur Jat, which offers three varieties. Ajay, the founder and barista says, “People have too many options: macchiato, cappuccino. This is what has become of our cafe culture. I want people to come only for coffee and pay what they feel so that they are present for the moment.”Story continues below this ad“People don’t know what they want, but if you give them fewer options, they can make up their minds faster. Less is more,” he adds.Validating the idea followed by these founders, during a recent webinar, Luca Moreno, CEO and co-founder of Nextatlas, an AI-powered foresight and trend-predicting platform, and Sara Roversi, Founder and President of the Future Food Institute, spoke of the “exhausted eater”.“An exhausted eater is one for whom even the act of deciding what to eat is overwhelming. This directly points to the menu options that exist. Earlier, we used to have multiple cuisines when we went to a restaurant for variety. People wanted that huge palette to decide from; variety is what was craved. But in today’s day and time, we see a sharp contrast.“According to Nextatlas’ analysis, conversations in the F&B industry concerning decision fatigue have grown by more than 114% over the past year. This is one of the pressing cultural shifts that is shaping our appetite today,” said Moreno.